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Thursday, March 1, 2018

Today's sapphire colors are my absolute least favorite colors of sapphire. I'm talking about green sapphires and yellow sapphires. Least favorite??? Why would a green color and a yellow color sapphire not be just as attractive as the other colors? Allow me to explain (as you knew I would anyway!).

Let's tackle the yellow issue first. I'm not a big fan of any yellow colored stones. I like to use a very rich colored yellow gold in all of my work and yellow stones just get lost in it. Sometimes it's almost like there isn't a stone there. If I'm using platinum (which is somewhat preferable) and the stone isn't a distinctively bright yellow then it just kind of looks pale and ashen. Since I generally prefer working in yellow gold, yellow colored stones just don't cut it for me. But this is me personally. If you like yellow, then there are lots of dark yellow sapphires out there with your name on them.

And then there are green sapphires. So when someone has heard that sapphires come in a green color, they invariably imagine they are going to see green sapphires that look like the emerald in the ring pictured above. But the problem is that you won't ever see any green sapphire that even remotely approaches the green colors in emeralds or tourmalines. Most greens have a heavy blue modifying color in them or a yellowish modifying color in them. This invariably makes them look muddy. Now admittedly some people like the kind of off-lime, muddy color of these stones (I know this because I've sold them) but I just can't bring myself to love them. In all of my years as a jeweler I have only bought ONE green sapphire of any size for my stock (although I have bought parcels of small, mixed color sapphires that have had greens in them because when you are buying parcels of stones, and getting the discounts that go along with buying quantities of gems, you have to take whatever is in the parcel---if you start pulling out the ugly ones you don't like the price goes up significantly). I bought the stone because I actually found it somewhat appealing and people were always asking me about the color of green sapphires so I figured I would have one in stock. I did sell it so maybe my own prejudices are getting in the way of what I want to sell, but as you know, I am quite fussy about what I am purveying to my customers.

So the takeaway here is that, yes you can get sapphires in these colors (and I'm happy to try and get the best examples of them available) but they aren't going to be the best colors of sapphires. Not at all like the purple sapphires I sell which will be the next topic in my blog, hopefully next week.

PLEASE NOTE: I sold the emerald to a customer for the ring above. As anyone who has been reading my blog for awhile knows I always tell people not to put emeralds in rings. ALWAYS. The next time this customer comes in my shop I'll take another picture so you can see the big chunk of the stone that she whacked out of the dead center of it.

About Me

I've been making and selling jewelry for 40 years. For 20 years I was one of the partners of Spirer Somes Jewelers. In 2004 I opened my own store with my wife Kathy. I have a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America. Everything sold in my store I make myself.